When food comes packaged in a can, you can pretty much assume a few things about it. It was produced in a standard way, with standard hygiene and health codes. It won't taste great, but it will taste good enough--and the same--each time. It's much easier to prepare, and costs a lot less than going to a restaurant for some bespoke food.
Does your photography aim to be like this, or like something else? Something more like the quirky tacqaria down the street, or that new restaurant with a chef with such crazy ideas you don't even understand how he's talking about food?
Because no matter how you think of your photography inside that crazy head of yours, clients with money to spend will be judging you and your work with the same ruthless criteria and process they judge any other product they buy to help their business make more money.
So one problem is, if they're expecting the equivalent of photos in a can, and you deliver ostrich in curry sauce topped with ice cream because you had a dream about it last night, there's going to be trouble. They're running a business, not a home for troubled photographers.
But hey, at least you'll make a lasting impression with that one, and provide the art director with a great story to tell. And redemption might be possible. Your bridge isn't burned with that, it's just a little unsafe at the moment. The two of you might be able to meet in the middle not too far down the road.
The much, much larger risk is, promising the remarkable, and delivering boring. The soup in a can. There's no story to tell there, other than a tale of woe about wasted time and having to re-do it. Any kind of redemption will be very far off, and very unlikely. Once you're boring, you are boring.
So it's a fine line sometimes. We need to take risks suitable for the job and the client. I think it's good to push ourselves to deliver one unexpected flavor for the first meal. Just one to start with for a new client--they can be picky eaters. But that's all it takes to avoid being soup in a can, and to gain the trust necessary to add more flavors next time, and more the next, until they're lined up outside demanding your kind of crazy.
Does your photography aim to be like this, or like something else? Something more like the quirky tacqaria down the street, or that new restaurant with a chef with such crazy ideas you don't even understand how he's talking about food?
Because no matter how you think of your photography inside that crazy head of yours, clients with money to spend will be judging you and your work with the same ruthless criteria and process they judge any other product they buy to help their business make more money.
So one problem is, if they're expecting the equivalent of photos in a can, and you deliver ostrich in curry sauce topped with ice cream because you had a dream about it last night, there's going to be trouble. They're running a business, not a home for troubled photographers.
But hey, at least you'll make a lasting impression with that one, and provide the art director with a great story to tell. And redemption might be possible. Your bridge isn't burned with that, it's just a little unsafe at the moment. The two of you might be able to meet in the middle not too far down the road.
The much, much larger risk is, promising the remarkable, and delivering boring. The soup in a can. There's no story to tell there, other than a tale of woe about wasted time and having to re-do it. Any kind of redemption will be very far off, and very unlikely. Once you're boring, you are boring.
So it's a fine line sometimes. We need to take risks suitable for the job and the client. I think it's good to push ourselves to deliver one unexpected flavor for the first meal. Just one to start with for a new client--they can be picky eaters. But that's all it takes to avoid being soup in a can, and to gain the trust necessary to add more flavors next time, and more the next, until they're lined up outside demanding your kind of crazy.
